President Mahinda Rajapakse has created a new ministry for law and order, and placed it in charge of the 80,000-strong police which had been overseen by the defence ministry for the past nine years.

During the conflict the police were under the direct supervision of the Defence Ministry, though the UNP had brought law enforcement operations under a newly created Interior Ministry following the Dec. 2001 general elections. The police were brought back under the Defence ministry by the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in early 2004.

Sri Lanka’s president has bowed to international pressure and relinquished the defence ministry’s authority over the police department, an official said Friday.

“The president has issued a gazette notification creating the ministry of Law and Order which will be responsible for the police department,” the President’s spokesman Mohan Samaranayake said.

President Rajapaksa would remain in charge of the newly created ministry. Sri Lanka’s former ambassador to Indonesia, Major General Nanda Mallawaarachchi would function as the Secretary to the ministry. He held the post of Army Chief of Staff during the tenure of Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka as commander of the army.

There was no government explanation for setting up the new ministry, but an official source said the new ministry had been created in keeping with the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

The panel, which probed the final stages of the island’s decades-long Tamil separatist war, recommended in November 2011 that the police department be de-linked from the defence ministry. This was strongly backed by rights groups and the international community.

The latest government move comes ahead of a visit to the island by the United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay following two Human Rights Council resolutions.

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